Ancient Egyptians - Cultural Origin, genetics, etc.

[Mindfire]

Look, there's even a link for it:

Egyptian Alien Gods Building Pyramids

This is rubbish and makes a mockery of both religion and science.

 

[Rikilamaro]

This is rubbish and makes a mockery of both religion and science.

You've never seen Ancient Aliens on the History Channel?

 

[Shockley]

It's absolute rubbish, and I think it highlights what I mean when I say that the modern Egyptian peoples deal with a lot of attempts by outsiders to steal their culture for their own benefit.

There are also theories like this: Indian Origin of Egyptian Civilization - English pravda.ru

 

[Mindfire]

You've never seen Ancient Aliens on the History Channel?

Seen it. Don't believe a word of it.

 

[Mindfire]

It's absolute rubbish, and I think it highlights what I mean when I say that the modern Egyptian peoples deal with a lot of attempts by outsiders to steal their culture for their own benefit.

There are also theories like this: Indian Origin of Egyptian Civilization - English pravda.ru

Well, I don't believe the Egyptians came from India either. But I do think they were more akin to the people now living in Sudan than to the people who currently inhabit the Egyptian area, who are quite obviously of Arabic descent. And since you seem to know a lot about the motivations of people in this argument, what's your motivation?

 

[Shockley]

First off, I'd like to clarify that I don't think you or Jabrosky are trying to steal from the ancient Egyptians. I think you are mistaken on their ethnicity (just as you think I am), but ultimately we're both trying to give what we see as the proper ethnic group due credit for their accomplishments. We're on the same side, I think, and we'd come down on the same side on issues where the originating ethnicity was clear-cut.

As to why: I'm a history major. I've committed my adult life to the study of the history of the world (with admitted specializations). When I go to class or write a paper, I have to get to the truth of the matter. If I make anything up, if I hypothesize without facts, etc. I get slammed for it. I threaten my future, and I think I do a general disservice to the people that came before me. History is my passion - that's why I'm majoring in that despite also wanting to be a writer (where English might make more sense).

I have to deal with a lot of stuff that tries to take credit away from the people who managed amazing things. I think the Egyptians are one such people, but I think they take the brunt of that.

It's like the Celtic peoples and Stonehenge, really. We know Celts built it, we're just not 100% sure of the method. Thus, people throw in the idea that aliens came down and told them how to do it. Or the Mayans, when people say that they (like Egyptians) were lorded over by Atlanteans and were not responsible for the pyramids they constructed. Or, when ancient European peoples said that giants (not Romans) built their roads and aqueducts. It does a disservice to the human race when we try to impose our own ethnic (or alien or spiritual) beliefs on history.

 

[Shockley]

First off, I'd like to clarify that I don't think you or Jabrosky are trying to steal from the ancient Egyptians. I think you are mistaken on their ethnicity (just as you think I am), but ultimately we're both trying to give what we see as the proper ethnic group due credit for their accomplishments. We're on the same side, I think, and we'd come down on the same side on issues where the originating ethnicity was clear-cut.

As to why: I'm a history major. I've committed my adult life to the study of the history of the world (with admitted specializations). When I go to class or write a paper, I have to get to the truth of the matter. If I make anything up, if I hypothesize without facts, etc. I get slammed for it. I threaten my future, and I think I do a general disservice to the people that came before me. History is my passion - that's why I'm majoring in that despite also wanting to be a writer (where English might make more sense).

I have to deal with a lot of stuff that tries to take credit away from the people who managed amazing things. I think the Egyptians are one such people, but I think they take the brunt of that.

It's like the Celtic peoples and Stonehenge, really. We know Celts built it, we're just not 100% sure of the method. Thus, people throw in the idea that aliens came down and told them how to do it. Or the Mayans, when people say that they (like Egyptians) were lorded over by Atlanteans and were not responsible for the pyramids they constructed. Or, when ancient European peoples said that giants (not Romans) built their roads and aqueducts. It does a disservice to the human race when we try to impose our own ethnic (or alien or spiritual) beliefs on history.

I should also state now that I have Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. What you might consider a pet peeve or mild concern I might see as a personal crusade, worthy of my full attention. So that explains at least some of this.

 

[Steerpike]

Does anyone in this thread apart from Rikilamaro have a sense of humor, and if not what is the most expeditious method of remedying that?

Whether you are looking at the issue from the hard sciences, or from the stand point of history, anthropology, or what have you, the important issue is to get to the truth of the matter. It's not about validating personal beliefs or looking only at factors that support those beliefs while discarding all else. As noted above, however, humans tend to be wired to do just that.

 

[grahamguitarman]

Oh dear, major humour malfunction here In case no-one gets it still, Steerpike was trying to lighten the stress levels here by injecting a bit of fun. Oh well, at least some of us appreciated the aliens joke

I only mentioned not being a creationist as a disclaimer - some people assume that if you distrust scientists, then you must be in the creationist camp, and I'm not. If people choose to believe in that religious stuff then let them (though when you get websites trying to prove that men and dinosaurs existed side by side it does get a bit far fetched).

Its interesting to note that modern Egyptians don't consider themselves to be the same as the Arabs. In fact there are a lot of working class Egyptians who are angry about being lumped in with the Arab nations. They describe their culture as being Pharaonic (or however you spell it) not Arabic.

But I do wonder just how related they are to the original Egyptians (this is one area where genetics would be useful). Certainly the visual evidence of Egyptian paintings shows a red-brown people, not the more olive skinned peoples we see today (though you do see examples of this in their art). This could of course be the result of generations of intermixing with their semitic neighbours to produce a lighter skinned population, but I'm not qualified to say for sure.

To clarify my position, my own personal opinion is that the Egyptians were a medium skinned (ie brown not black or white) and definitely African people. I suspect they were a separate race from the Nubians, but still related to them both culturally and genetically.

 

[Steerpike]

Oh dear, major humour malfunction here In case no-one gets it still, Steerpike was trying to lighten the stress levels here by injecting a bit of fun. Oh well, at least some of us appreciated the aliens joke

Thank you. I was beginning to think everyone had lost their minds.

 

[Devor]

Given the way people historically have cared so much about race and skin color, I have trouble believing Egyptians were mostly black and history just missed it. But whatever their origins, I think they very much developed their own identity in all the ways that actually matter.

That is, after they managed to destroy the last vestiges of their alien overlords living in Atlantis.

 

[Mindfire]

Given the way people historically have cared so much about race and skin color, I have trouble believing Egyptians were mostly black and history just missed it.

I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy nut, but given the attitude that all manner of people, scientists included, have historically had toward Black people, I find it very easy to believe that evidence supporting the Egyptians being black would have been dismissed or ignored.

 

[Devor]

I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy nut, but given the attitude that all manner of people, scientists included, have historically had toward Black people, I find it very easy to believe that evidence supporting the Egyptians being black would have been dismissed or ignored.

Okay, but at some point in history there wouldn't have been evidence and argument. At some point it would just have been obvious, blatant fact. How does that fact go unrecorded and forgotten? That's what I don't understand. If the Egyptians were predominantly black, wouldn't their preeminent position on the continent make them just about the first encounter Eurasians would have with the African peoples? Wouldn't they have preempted or else-wise defined the racial prejudice?

 

[Mindfire]

Okay, but at some point in history there wouldn't have been evidence and argument. At some point it would just have been obvious, blatant fact. How does that fact go unrecorded and forgotten? That's what I don't understand. If the Egyptians were predominantly black, wouldn't their preeminent position on the continent make them just about the first encounter Eurasians would have with the African peoples? Wouldn't they have preempted or else-wise defined the racial prejudice?

Not necessarily. Remember that there's a huge time gap, thousands of years, between their civilization and and when we re-discovered their artifacts. In the time when the Egyptians ruled the earth, racial stigma as we know it today, based on skin color, didn't really exist. So their skin tone wouldn't have really been a big deal. But the big Egyptology boom was in the 1800s to early 1900s IIRC, even though some work had probably been done before then, and coincidentally, racial stigma based on skin color was very strong during that same period. It's not at all hard to believe that the people of that time would have just assumed the Egyptians to be white. And there was absolutely no incentive for anybody to challenge this assumption because it's only very recently that Black people have been given credit for the societies that we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they did create. Think about that.

And furthermore, it's only very recently that popular depictions of the Egyptians have been willing to concede at the very least that they were not white. Just about every popular depiction of the Egyptians before the late 90s cast them as white people with dark skinned servants. Nowadays people realize that's rubbish and opt for a politically correct "brown" but are also quite careful to avoid making the Egyptians too brown. I watched a documentary on the History channel that depicted Akhenaten as being several shades lighter even than anyone in modern Egypt. And what is responsible for this? This trope! But Not Too Black - Television Tropes & Idioms With all the unfortunate implications thereof.

 

[Shockley]

Well, Akhenaten might be a special case. Remember that he was severely inbred and physically deformed, so any depiction of him should vary from the norm. Not only do depictions of him make that clear, they've been registered as traits in Tutankhamun (his son) as well. That's why there are so many theories revolving around him being an alien (again, absolute rubbish). His religious beliefs and mental instability attribute to an increasingly bizarre picture of the man.

One problem I have is that a lot of the histories (like Herodotus') were preserved in their most ancient form by accident. There were revisions to ancient texts - I'm willing to admit that, but their translations in other languages have preserved some of the pre-edited texts. We have Herodotus in several early forms (Latin, ancient Greek, Arabic, etc.) that wouldn't have been touched by the revisionists. When we translate them from these older texts to modern languages, we find plenty of revisions but nothing pointing to the Egyptians having been black.

 

[Mindfire]

Well, Akhenaten might be a special case. Remember that he was severely inbred and physically deformed, so any depiction of him should vary from the norm. Not only do depictions of him make that clear, they've been registered as traits in Tutankhamun (his son) as well. That's why there are so many theories revolving around him being an alien (again, absolute rubbish). His religious beliefs and mental instability attribute to an increasingly bizarre picture of the man.

One problem I have is that a lot of the histories (like Herodotus') were preserved in their most ancient form by accident. There were revisions to ancient texts - I'm willing to admit that, but their translations in other languages have preserved some of the pre-edited texts. We have Herodotus in several early forms (Latin, ancient Greek, Arabic, etc.) that wouldn't have been touched by the revisionists. When we translate them from these older texts to modern languages, we find plenty of revisions but nothing pointing to the Egyptians having been black.

Weren't you the one who posted the images earlier? By your own admission, the Egyptians consistently depicted themselves as having dark red-brown skin. So for you to say they weren't black seems contradictory to me. But then again, I suppose we should establish exactly what definition we're using for "Black" here. I admit my own definition of the term is quite loose.

 

[Shockley]

I mean black in the Sub-Saharan African sense (since, as I mentioned, I do view the Egyptians as Africans). But there are many, many dark brown, red brown, etc. people who aren't sub-saharan Africa, even within Africa itself. Berber, Tuaregs, Maghrebi, etc. While some of them did enter the area in later eras (the Phoenician Carthaginians, for one), it seems to me that's a fairly consistent skin tone in north Africa.

 

[Shockley]

To clarify what I mean, both of these men are Berbers, of varying tribes and groups:

This is Zinedine Zidane, who was born in France but of Berber stock.

This is a Tuareg (Tuareg are closely related to Berbers, but speak their own language) man standing next to a Nigerian. Some are even darker than that, as this next picture points out:

 

[Mindfire]

To clarify what I mean, both of these men are Berbers, of varying tribes and groups:

This is Zinedine Zidane, who was born in France but of Berber stock.

This is a Tuareg (Tuareg are closely related to Berbers, but speak their own language) man standing next to a Nigerian. Some are even darker than that, as this next picture points out:

Yeah, see all of those people look "Black" to me, except maybe the guy on the top. My own definition of the term is very loose. I essentially use it as synonymous with "African."

 

[Shockley]

If you use the term black to describe all African peoples, then yes, the average Egyptian would have been black. But that's not an accurate term.